Drone
by LittleMewLugia
Summary: Summary: Starscream asks Barricade to find him a test subject for his latest invention. Barricade is only too happy to comply, and to deliver the invention to its intended target. Contains a fair amount of violence and nastiness.
1. Chapter 1: Test Subject

-1Drone.

Summary: Starscream asks Barricade to find him a test subject for his latest invention. Barricade is only too happy to comply, and to deliver the invention to its intended target.

Rating: M for violence/nastiness

Pairings: None

Disclaimer: Transformers belongs to Hasbro and Dreamworks/Paramount, not me.

Drone.

Chapter One:Test Subject.

Barricade stood before Starscream, as the latter passed him a small, multi-legged object.

"I understand, Lord Starscream. You have a new invention you wish to test, and you wish me to suggest a suitable target, and to deliver the device to the subject." stated Barricade.

"Yes." said Starscream.

"I hear and obey, Lord Starscream. I know of a suitable target, and how to deliver it.

"Then tell me, tell me who the test subject will be." With a chilling laugh, Barricade told him who and what he had in mind. Starscream took the object back.

"Then this merely needs a little more judicious programming, what the fleshlings might call a "personal touch." Starscream said, smiling cruelly. He made a couple of brief adjustments and handed it back.

"The results of this test will be most interesting. The device has been programmed to shut down for twelve hours after introduction to the test subject in order to avoid detection. You will deliver it to the test subject and then return here. You are dismissed." Starscream told him.

Barricade nodded curtly and left, clutching the item Starscream had given him in one hand. Now, he had only to lure the chosen subject into a fight, and he knew just how to do that.

Changing into car form, he headed for where he knew he would find the Autobot he had in mind.


	2. Chapter 2: The Fight

-1Drone.

Chapter Two: The Fight.

Barricade silently drew up and stopped at a good vantage point where he could watch for his chosen prey. The Witwicky drive was empty of any car, be that green Porsche or yellow Camaro, but Barricade could wait. He knew the value of patience.

His patience was rewarded an hour later, as the yellow Camaro he was watching for purred up the road and headed for Sam's drive. If in robot form he would have grinned, for the need for patience was over, and there was no need at all for subtlety.

He transformed into robot form and stepped out in front of Bumblebee, who only just swerved in time to avoid the foot Barricade swung at him.

Bumblebee screeched round in a half-turn to face Barricade, disgorging his human passengers roughly.

"Oh no, oh nononono!" Sam cried as he and Mikaela backed off as Bumblebee transformed, ensuring he was between the Decepticon and the two humans. "Oh nononono! Oh shit!" he cried as Barricade lunged at Sam's Autobot friend.

Sam saw a clawed hand lash out, fingers curved so the claws impacted at a certain angle, heard the screech of tearing metal mix with Bumblebee's pained cry as Barricade's powerful hydraulic arms and fingers tensed, and ripped three deep gashes in Bumblebee's side. The two robots fell, and in the melee, nobody noticed a small form scuttle down from where it had been nestled between Barricade's hand and the wheel at his wrist, head straight for the gashes, and scuttle swiftly inside the Autobot's torso.

Once inside, the little mechanism scuttled deep inside Bumblebee, attached itself to a thick cable, and shut itself off.

Barricade and Bumblebee exchanged a few more blows, although Barricade did not, to Sam's relief, repeat the clawing of Bumblebee's side. At one point, Barricade obviously decided that he had had enough, for he threw Bumblebee from him, and as Bumblebee crashed into the side of the house and dropped onto Ron's new patio, every slab fracturing under the impact, Barricade transformed back into car form and zoomed off down the road, with a total disregard for the speed limit.

"Bumblebee!" cried Sam, rushing over to look at the damage Barricade had done. The dents and scratches did not concern him as much as the rents that Barricade had first inflicted. Coolant and lubricant was oozing from them, and it was Mikaela who dashed into Judy's kitchen, and grabbed the kitchen paper and aluminium foil wrap. Then she went into the front room and grabbed Ron's roll of heavy-duty duct tape. Going back outside, she started stuffing wads of kitchen paper in the rents, covered them with the foil wrap, and used the very sticky duct tape to hold the foil wrap in place.

"Hopefully, that should deal with the leakage for now." she said. "Really, we need to get Ratchet to you."

"It would be better if I could get to Ratchet, his medical bay will have everything he needs to repair me. I can still transform and take us there." said Bumblebee, who although he whined a couple of times as he moved was otherwise reacting as if having his side ripped open was a part of Autobot daily life. _'Perhaps it was before I met him.' _Sam reflected. There was a lot about Bumblebee's early life Sam didn't know about, and wasn't sure he wanted to.

Early on in their friendship, after the Mission City battle, Sam had managed to coax Bumblebee into telling him about what actually happened at Tyger Pax. He had asked Bumblebee to leave nothing out. Sam had thought talking about it in detail might be therapeutic for the little Autobot. However, Bumblebee, optics dimmed and voice halting, had gone into so much detail that Sam had started to feel extremely ill. At the point Bumblebee had told Sam about how and why he had lost his voice, Sam had barfed, and not stopped until all he could do was dry heave.

Sam was pulled away from those unpleasant memories (recalling the telling still made his gorge rise) as Bumblebee transformed and opened his doors. Mikaela pressed down on the bits of duct tape still showing, making sure it was still adhering. Then they got in, and Bumblebee drove them to the base. Ratchet had admired Mikaela's quick thinking and the first aid work, but had insisted they could not stay with Bumblebee as "You'd only get in the way, and how would I explain it to Optimus or your parental units if I trod on one of you?"

They had had to wait outside as Ratchet patched him up, which hadn't stopped them hearing Ratchet's opinion about the Decepticons in general ("AllSpark rejects pre-doomed to the Pit before they were first onlined.") and Barricade's likely parentage in particular ("That Pitspawn's got to be the Dark God's favourite offspring!") as he found the extent of the damage ("Primus help me! What a slagging _mess_!") and welded Bumblebee's side up. Once the welds had cooled, a quick spray of yellow paint covered the unsightly scarring, which Ratchet assured Bumblebee would heal in time.

"I must admit, for Barricade to take off like that when he seemed to be winning was a distinct oddity." said Ratchet, as he scanned Bumblebee for any damage he'd somehow missed. "He probably realised that to hang about in a public place looking and behaving like that might bring the Army down on him. He must know that units armed with Sabot rounds are sent out to investigate _any_ activity that suggests Decepticon involvement."

After putting Bumblebee in a recharge chamber for three hours, Ratchet declared him healthy, and released him to take Sam and Mikaela back home, as Ratchet could find nothing from his scans to indicate that anything was at all amiss.

As it was in complete shutdown, the scuttler inside the Autobot scout was not detected.


	3. Chapter 3: Repair Systems Non Functional

-1Drone

Chapter Three

Repair Systems Non-Functional

Bumblebee drove his human friends home, dropping Mikaela off at her mom's house, and then taking Sam back. When Bumblebee pulled up on the drive, instead of getting out, Sam sat there for a moment. Bumblebee didn't need to scan Sam to know that his human friend was concerned about something.

"Sam? Ratchet has repaired the damage, I will soon be fully repaired by my own systems, there is no need to worry."

Sam reached down to stroke Bumblebee's seat leather, and Bumblebee responded with a contented sigh, and a snuggle of his seat against Sam's body.

"I just hated seeing Barricade rip your side open like that, Bumblebee." Sam replied. "Thanks for defending us, that must have hurt."

"Sam, I am your guardian and your friend. I will always try to guard you against Barricade, and any other Decepticon that wants to try and hurt you and those dear to you. I have defeated him before and will defeat him again." Bumblebee stated. "It will take more than a surprise use of his hydraulic joints and clawed hands to defeat me, and Barricade knows that. To cause me that amount of damage took more energy than Barricade is usually willing to expend in a simple skirmish like that. I underestimated him, and he changed his tactics and took advantage of that. It is not a mistake I intend to repeat."

"Yeah, well it was still nasty." Sam said. "I worry that he will come back tonight. You can't stay on guard tonight, Bumblebee, you must be tired from the fight, and he could try and take advantage of that to attack you again." Bumblebee could tell that Sam was scared, for both of them.

"Please, Sam, I have had some recharge, I will be able to function at optimum efficiency for several days now. If Barricade comes back tonight, I will be ready and waiting for him, and I will defeat him again." Bumblebee delivered this promise in a tone that was not boastful or prideful, but as a simple statement of fact. "Rest, please, Sam, I will be protecting you."

"Thanks." Sam said, reassured. After his first terrifying encounter with the black and white Decepticon, Sam was still frightened of Barricade. With no sightings of the murderous Police car for several months, Sam had begun to hope that Barricade had more important things to do than terrorise Sam and bash his guardian about, but the day's earlier encounter seemed to have destroyed that hope. Sam got out, closed Bumblebee's door, and stroked his hood, as he did every night now before going inside.

"Goodnight, Bumblebee." he said.

"Goodnight, Sam, sleep well." Bumblebee replied.

He got inside, walking through into the front room, to find his parents waiting with serious expressions on their faces. Sam's father turned to him.

"Hey, Sam, do you think you could explain the mess out there that used to be my patio? At least, it _was_ a patio when we went out." he asked. Sam groaned, recalling that Barricade had paid his visit while his folks were out of the house. Of course, he reflected, it could be worse. At least this time he would not have to lie to them.

Sam was, not for the first time, relieved that he had come clean to his parents about the Autobots, and Bumblebee in particular. He was also now glad that he had told his parents about the Decepticons, including all of his previous experiences, from the first Barricade encounter to Mission City.

"Remember that evil cop car I told you about? Well, he paid me a home visit today." Sam explained "Bumblebee tried to stop him, and they fought. Well Barricade-that's the cop car's name, remember?-threw Bumblebee at the house and he sort of landed on the patio." Ron nodded.

"At least I can claim off the Government for the cost of the slabs. They agreed that if we help them cover up the robots' existence, we can claim for any damage they cause." He pulled out

a thick, complicated-looking form and handed it to Sam.

"Simmons found out somehow-I guess some of the neighbours, or passing motorists, saw. He told me to tell you to fill this out. I would suggest that you leave that till tomorrow. _We_ know about the robots, but the school don't. Somehow, I don't think 'the robot ate my homework' will wash with them." Ron said.

"Crap!" Sam swore: he remembered he _did_ have an essay to hand in on Monday. "Um-I'll sweep the yard and do the bins, then I'll write my essay."

"Just write your essay, dear, I'm sure you can be let off chores for a night." his mother said. Ron gave Judy a hangdog look, but nodded his agreement.

"Thanks, Dad, you're the best," Sam said, before bolting upstairs.

"I am aren't I?" Ron muttered as he went to put on his shoes.

Sam wrote half the essay in half-an-hour: he could write some more tomorrow evening once he got in. Hoping he could put in enough to scrape by with a pass, he shoved it in his bag. Maybe he could ask Mikaela to look it over for him before she headed home tomorrow. He yawned: it had been a tense and scary day, and tense and scary usually made Sam sleepy. He got under the covers, hoping Barricade was not on his way over.

Barricade did not put in an appearance that night, for his task was done. All he and Starscream had to do was wait until all Pit broke loose. That would happen some time later, for it would take Starscream's little invention time to carry out all the commands embedded in its programming.

A little after six AM in the morning, Bumblebee was still awake and with all external sensors running, watching out for any signs of Barricade. He was unaware when the scuttling mechanism, which resembled Scorponok but was many times smaller, reactivated.

It obeyed the first instruction in its programming, which was to move slowly with as little energy expenditure as possible, to reduce the chances of being detected. However, it was not just moving aimlessly about, but was headed to a specific location to carry out a specific instruction.

When it reached the main circuit-hub that controlled Bumblebee's auto-repair, it began. The auto-repair hub was a large and spreading structure, and would require many hours of work, but the drone, with the single-mindedness of all programmed and unliving machines, set about its task methodically.

Bit by bit, wire by wire, circuit by circuit, it slowly but steadily began to disable Bumblebee's damage detection and auto-repair function.


	4. Chapter 4: The Personal Touch

-1Drone

Chapter Four

The 'Personal Touch'

Dawn broke, and Sam awoke to sunlight trying to pierce the fabric of the curtains in his room. Yawning, he dressed, and then opened his window. His yellow Camaro was outside, looking like nothing more than a flashy car.

"Bumblebee?" Sam called down quietly to his Autobot friend.

"Sam? Good morning!" called up Bumblebee, equally quietly. "There was no sign of Barricade last night or this morning." he said. Sam breathed out in relief: maybe his last fight with his Autobot guardian had tired out Barricade too.

"Sam? It is a Sunday today. That means that you have most of the day free. Could you and Mikaela give me a wash?" Bumblebee asked.

Sam grinned: Bumblebee enjoyed being washed, and not because he was a clean freak. Bumblebee had once explained to Sam that a network of sensors extended through his systems, both inside and out. Bumblebee's metal skin was therefore as sensitive, if not more so, than Sam's own organic skin. Sam knew that Bumblebee was tactilely stimulated by being washed, even in car form. It was Sam's intention to one day ask Bumblebee if he could wash him at the Autobot base in robot form: he was curious to see how sensitive Bumblebee was in robot form, and exactly where.

"I'll call Mikaela, I'm sure she'll agree, and you do know that it's a fortnight since your last wax? That means you're due a wax today as well." Sam said, and turned to get his phone.

"We could go for a drive about afterwards, if you like." Bumblebee said. "We could go to the Lookout, or to where Optimus landed, or somewhere you think of, if you like."

Sam called Mikaela, and she was more than happy to come and give Bumblebee a wash, especially if it involved a drive around afterwards. Sam got in, and Bumblebee drove them to Mikaela's, where she, with a bag of spare clothes and some towels, got in.

"Hi, Bumblebee, feeing better?" Mikaela asked, stroking his dash affectionately.

"Yes, thank you, much better, Ratchet's repairs mean the scars are healing very well." Bumblebee assured Mikaela.

Bumblebee then drove them back to Sam's house, where Sam and Mikaela got ready the buckets of soapy water, the sponges, the soft leathers (One for each human to use) and the bottle of wax. Mikaela's spare clothes and towels were waiting for her in the Witwicky downstairs bathroom, for when washing their Autobot friend, Sam and Mikaela tended to get thoroughly soaked.

They gave him a thorough wetting and scrubbing, making sure to wash all those parts that other people might forget: behind the tires, under the bumper, under the doors, around the outside edges of the chassis, and around the door, hood, and trunk hinges and edges. The tires got a good hosing down too, and just for good measure, Mikaela took a quick look at his engine, which was still clean and looked in great condition to Mikaela's practiced eye. To help the time pass, Bumblebee alternately talked to them and played them songs from the radio.

After that, they used the wax and leathers to good effect, so that once they had finished, although _they_ were damp, grubby, and sweaty, Bumblebee gleamed in the morning sun.

"Thank you." Bumblebee said once they had finished, showing them his appreciation by playing them the "Wonderful, you're wonderful" clip he'd played when Mikaela had worked out that he was alien, after that first Barricade/Bumblebee fight at the dump.

"Well, we'd best clean up, so we'll see you in about half an hour, buddy." said Sam. Sam took the upstairs bathroom and Mikaela the downstairs one (after advising Ron and Judy to 'go' if they needed to) and then they changed into fresh clothes. Judy told Mikaela to dump her stuff in the wash basket, she was doing a wash anyway, and after thanking her, Sam and Mikaela went back downstairs. Bumblebee flicked open his doors for them, an open invitation that both Sam and Mikaela accepted, sitting down in his front seats, which Bumblebee moulded to give them optimum comfort. They fastened their seat belts, and only then did Bumblebee start his engine.

"Where do you want to go?" Bumblebee asked.

"The Lookout, please!" Mikaela asked, as Sam smiled. They both had some very fond memories of that location, as Optimus had stood, looking into space and beaming out his message to the other Autobots. Neither Sam nor Mikaela had heard the contents of that message, as much as because they were too involved with each other as that Optimus had sent it out quietly.

The message had been a signal to other Autobots, inviting them to join Optimus and the other four on Earth. Several had turned up in the intervening months. '_Who would have thought that nine months on from my presentation about my great-grandfather Archibald Witwicky's expedition to the North Pole, that we'd have big alien friends with names like Cliffjumper, Mirage, Prowl, Jazz, Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Ratchet, Hound and, of course, Bumblebee?' _

Sam thought amusedly to himself.

'_Not forgetting having fought enemies with names like Megatron, Blackout, Starscream, Bonecrusher, Brawl, Barricade and Frenzy. Trent would accuse me of being mad like my great grandfather if I told him!' _Sam thought sourly, but, then, at least with his friends, the Mission City battle was one fight they had won. _'That, at least, is something that neither Barricade nor Trent can take away from me." _thought Sam, cheering up at the thought.

As Bumblebee pulled away with his human friends relaxed inside him, Bumblebee ignored the tickling sensation that was running along his auto-repair sensors. It was probably a side-effect of the systems working to repair the gashes Barricade had inflicted. Healing armour always itched, as he knew, so he ignored it, and took his human friends where they wanted to go. Ignoring it seemed to work: five minutes later the sensation was gone.

Unbeknownst to Bumblebee, the nasty little drone had finished its first task: Bumblebee's damage detection system and auto-repair function was now completely destroyed. The second stage of its programming-the 'personal touch' Starscream had introduced-kicked in, and the scuttling mechanoid scurried up inside Bumblebee's body. It briefly paused by his Spark chamber, but its programming contained instructions for dealing with that further on: for now it was to ignore it.

It scuttled up into Bumblebee's chest/throat junction, and set about its assigned task. Starscream knew enough about Bumblebee to have ensured that this test of his invention would hurt Bumblebee as much as possible, both physically and psychologically.

Following Starscream's recently-programmed instructions to it, the drone began to attack and destroy Bumblebee's vocal processing unit, one chip and circuit at a time.


	5. Chapter 5: Technical Difficulties

-1Drone

Chapter Five

Technical Difficulties

"The view is quite beautiful, isn't it?" Mikaela asked Sam, as they lay on Bumblebee just as they had the first time they had been here, but with two important differences: this time, there was no Optimus, Ironhide, or Ratchet here, and it was closer to the middle of the day than the end.

"Mm, yeah." Sam murmured, who was certainly enjoying the view, although he wasn't looking at the landscape. Mikaela noticed where his gaze was going, and playfully slapped his leg.

Bumblebee had not talked for about half an hour now, but had seemed content just to play a mixture of recent hits and romantic songs from before Sam and Mikaela's time. Much as Sam and Mikaela would have liked to have stayed there snuggling for longer, they had already spent two hours doing so, and Sam had decided that he wanted to go and see their friends at the Autobot base.

They got in Bumblebee. "Can we go to the base, Bumblebee?" asked Sam. Bumblebee tooted his horn and pulled out, but something just wasn't right, Sam realised. Once again, Sam noticed, Bumblebee seemed mainly to be playing music. They weren't even songs he and Mikaela particularly liked, they seemed to be sad, depressing songs. Sometimes, Bumblebee wasn't even playing whole songs, he was just playing bits. He listened closer to the bits.

"….the sound….of silence." then

"It's so funny, how we don't talk anymore…."

Sam wondered what Bumblebee was doing. It reminded him of when Bumblebee could only talk through his radio. That really didn't make sense, Bumblebee loved to talk, as Sam knew, and he also, after his disastrous attempt to therapise Bumblebee, knew _why_.

His reflections were interrupted by a horrendous, painful-sounding squeal, as the radio went through some painful feedback and then squawked once, and then fell silent.

"Bumblebee?" he asked, but neither voice nor radio answered him, but Bumblebee speeded up, barely keeping to the speed limit. Silent and fast: in humans that often signified anger, and although Bumblebee wasn't human, Sam, oddly enough, found that he had more in common with his guardian than some members of his own species.

Sam fiddled with the radio knob and stroked Bumblebee's dash, but it made no difference: neither voice nor radio responded. Sam was now concerned that he had unintentionally pissed Bumblebee off. Had he farted and not realised it, or had Mikaela done something else equally organic and disgusting?

"Bumblebee, have I said or done something to upset you, buddy? If I have, please tell me what it is that I've done wrong? It wasn't intentional whatever it was, I promise!"

Mikaela added her apologies and pleas to Sam's.

Both Sam and Mikaela felt the seats cradling them give them both what they recognised as a comforting squeeze. On the one hand, Sam was relieved: Bumblebee would not have done that if one or both of them had upset him. On the other, he was concerned: why wasn't Bumblebee talking? Bumblebee loved using his voice, having lost the use of it for so long, so if he wasn't talking to them, but wasn't annoyed with them….. Sam's thoughts took a disturbing turn.

"Bumblebee, one seat-squeeze for yes and two for no. You're not _refusing_ to talk, are you?"

He was answered by two squeezes.

"So, is it that you _can't_ talk?" he asked. This time he was answered by one squeeze only, and a small shudder ran through Bumblebee's entire body. Sam ran a comforting hand over Bumblebee's dash.

"Oh no. Oh no no." Sam said, fighting a rising fear within him. "Bumblebee, you're going to be okay, right? We're headed for the base, right, Ratchet'll sort it out."

One long, comforting squeeze: _yes_. However, Sam felt that Bumblebee was only saying it to comfort him, he wasn't sure if Bumblebee believed his words of comfort, and why should he? Sam didn't know anything about Cybertronian anatomy or how easy or otherwise it was to fix a vocal processor, or what could go wrong, so his assurances were empty hopes, and Sam realised that Bumblebee _knew_ that.

He also knew that Bumblebee as hoping the same thing, but that he was scared. The odd, irregular tremors running through Bumblebee's bodywork told him and Mikaela both that Bumblebee was _terrified._

The drone had finished its attack on Bumblebee's communications systems, having destroyed not just his vocal and radio communications, but his data and Cybertronian communications systems too: he could hear vocal input, he had not lost his hearing, but all of his other data input and output methods were dead.

Scuttling back down into his chest - and once again pausing by Bumblebee's Spark chamber for a second - it moved on to its next instruction. Reaching his transformation circuitry and the linkages within it, it began disconnecting and severing wires, causing a short-circuit here and severing a linkage there. It left dead wires and broken chips in its wake. It was completely dismantling his transformation matrix.

As the drone severed the second-to-last connection, the loss triggered a Cybertronian built-in survival instinct: for the body to be in its most defensible form.

It triggered a last transformation.

Bumblebee shuddered, this one greater than the others, and he felt his bodywork beginning to shift without any conscious output from himself. Horrified, he realised that he was no longer in control of his transforming abilities, he was transforming with no control whatsoever over it. If he could have screamed, he would have.

His human friends were still inside him.


	6. Chapter 6: Medical Emergency

-1Drone

Chapter Six

Medical Emergency

Bumblebee did the only thing he could still do: he retracted the seatbelts, with assist from Sam and Mikaela who had, only seconds after him, realised that Bumblebee was transforming. Bumblebee was thankful that one of the earliest stages of his transformation involved the doors opening and his roof folding back. Pushing against his friends as hard as he could he ejected them from his interior as it reconfigured. He was just in time: had he taken much longer, they would have been crushed as his interior twisted and rearranged as he assumed robot form.

Sam and Mikaela landed on opposite sides of the road, Sam landing on a grass verge and Mikaela rolling against a dividing barrier, both letting out pained grunts as they landed. Traffic swerved and horns blared as the traffic found it's way blocked both ways by Bumblebee's legs. Curses and exclamations were let out, and Sam took advantage of the confusion to zigzag between the halted cars

and rush to assist Mikaela. Like him, her face and hands were a mess of scrapes and spots of blood.

"What the Hell? What's he playing at, Sam? He could have killed us!" Mikaela said, half in shock, half in anger.

"Mikaela, you _know _Bumblebee. He would _never_ endanger us like that willingly! Something's wrong!" Sam looked up at his yellow Autobot friend, who had moved over to the same side of the road and was staring at them both, pain and fear visible in his blue optics.

"Bumblebee, Mikaela, we can still walk to the base, but I think we'd better do so behind those trees." Sam said, pointing to the shrubbery planted the other side of the fence. The land beyond appeared to be farmland, and this field, at least, had a border Bumblebee could walk in, so he shouldn't destroy too much of the crop in the field.

Bumblebee swiftly slipped behind the cover of the trees, although he had to crouch to not be seen above them, and after climbing over the fence, Sam and Mikaela joined him.

"I'm calling Ratchet to let him know to expect us." Sam said, doing just that on his phone, for the Autobots had arranged this facility in case the humans needed their assist.

"Sam, it's Ratchet. What is it?" he asked.

"It's Bumblebee. He can't speak, his radio's down, and he transformed without warning to robot form, only just managing to throw us clear." Sam explained. "You know Bumblebee, he wouldn't do that if he could help it, and he looks scared if you ask me."

Sam explained.

"We've got him out of sight and we're heading towards base. We can ask him yes/no questions, getting him to respond by nodding his head." Bumblebee nodded at Sam upon hearing this, to confirm.

"Can he transform back into his disguise?" Ratchet asked. Sam repeated the question to Bumblebee, who obviously tried, optics dimming, but after a moment, he shook his head.

"No." Sam told Ratchet.

"Head for base but keep out of sight. I'll get my diagnostic instruments and repair area ready to receive him, then I'll come out to meet you. This sounds serious, and your mobile signal isn't too far." Ratchet signed off, and Sam repeated what Ratchet had said to Bumblebee and Mikaela.

Bumblebee shifted until he was on his hands and knees. Sam and Mikaela went, one either side of him, resting hands on the hide of their friend, who although he tried to put a brave face on it, still occasionally shook a little.

Wanting to reassure him, but not knowing what to say, they walked beside him, occasionally patting or stroking the smooth metal arm they were touching.

The drone moved quickly now, the need for stealth abandoned, scrabbling down inside Bumblebee's body cavity, having turned his transformation circuitry into nothing more than twisted wires, shorted chips and melted blobs of plastic and metal. It skittered downwards now, heading for his torso/hip juncture, where many wires and sensors came together and linked up. As it went, it used it's micro laser to shoot at a few more structures as it passed, not destroying them completely, but damaging them badly enough to ensure it was painful.

Upon reaching the junction, it located the sensory and locomotor cables, severing the latter and slowly damaging the former. It would destroy them eventually, but would do so slowly and painfully.

It had been specifically designed by Starscream to torture its victim while slowly destroying him.

Bumblebee came to an abrupt halt as two things happened-he felt himself losing control, over his legs, as his hip area and thighs erupted in white-hot pain. As he fell, he shoved Sam - who was under him - to one side, and again, had he been able to scream, he would have.

Sam was dialling Ratchet as he got back to his feet.

"Sam?" Ratchet answered.

"It's Bumblebee! He's got worse, he's just fallen over, his legs are jerking, it doesn't look like he has any control over them, and he's writhing. If he were a human, I'd say he's in agony, but I don't know."

"We're not so different, Sam, he probably is. Don't get close enough that he accidentally harm you, but try and tell him that I'm on my way, and so, now, is Optimus, to transport him back to the base." Sam heard Ratchet's sirens start up on the phone, but realised he could hear them over the distance too, getting closer. Mikaela climbed back over the fence, waving as the greenish-yellow S&R vehicle came into sight.

Ratchet barely slowed, transforming into robot form and stepping over the tree line, kneeling by Bumblebee and initiating a scan. He caught Bumblebee's shoulders, trying to soothe him, murmuring comfortingly in what must have been Cybertronian. Bumblebee stilled a little, looking up pleadingly at Ratchet, who burst into another string of Cybertronian as his scan results came back. It sounded angry rather than comforting this time, and Sam had an idea that whatever Ratchet was saying wasn't likely to be very polite.

"There is something untranslatable in there actively destroying his untranslatable systems!" he said. "Bumblebee, there is little I can do here, I need to get you to base, Optimus will transport you. I can't repair your systems out here, nor permanently shut this thing down while it's in you. I _can_ do some damage limitation, but I'll have to offline you." Bumblebee nodded, then writhed again, and Ratchet winced.

"Judging by that, offlining you will be a mercy." he said. Reaching under one of Bumblebee's back plates, he fiddled with something, and Bumblebee's optics dimmed and went out as his body stopped writhing, although his legs still twitched.

Grasping Bumblebee's leg in one hand and laying his other hand on Bumblebee's torso, he instructed Sam and Mikaela to stand back. They did so, and Ratchet sent an electro-magnetic pulse through Bumblebee's systems.

The drone had almost finished destroying the cluster of wires and circuitry that moved Bumblebee's legs, and was continuing to slowly and painfully sever the sensory cables when the electro-magnetic pulse discharged through the host washed over it.

Starscream had been thinking forward when he designed it, for it had EMP shielding armour, but this didn't stop the effects of the pulse entirely, just lessened the effects. The drone jerked as it was hit, and rolled up, tail-over-head, temporarily deactivated. The other addition Starscream had built in - auto-repair circuitry of its own - activated.

It would soon be back to carrying out it's pre-programmed orders.

"I hope to Primus that slows down whatever is causing this." Ratchet said. "I sent an electromagnetic pulse through him, it shouldn't be strong enough to destroy Bumblebee, but hopefully will knock out for a bit whatever the _frag _is causing this!" He looked up.

"Could somebody go out and watch for Prime? The quicker we get Bumblebee back to the base, the quicker I can get treating him."

"I'll go." said Mikaela. She climbed over the fence and was gone.

"Is Bumblebee going to be all right, Ratchet?" asked Sam, tears in his eyes.

"I hope so, Sam, I really do, but until I get him back to base and my operating area, I really don't know." Ratchet told him. Still crouching, he gathered the inert form of Bumblebee tenderly into his arms.

"Come on, Prime, move your aft, we need you here _now!_" he muttered, almost to himself.


	7. Chapter 7: Race Against Time

-1Chapter Seven

Drone

Race Against Time

Five minutes later, Optimus turned up, towing a cargo container and blasting his horn. Mikaela waved madly at him and he came to an abrupt halt. There was an accompanying yell of "Get out of my way, dumbass!" bearing testimony to how fast he had braked. The car swerved around him, and Mikaela ran around to unlock the back of the container. Ratchet stepped over the trees and fence while Sam scaled the fence and dropped down beside Ratchet. As he helped her swing open the back of the container, Ratchet carried the inert scout's body into the back of the container, and Sam followed. Mikaela pushed the doors shut behind them and locked the bars, then went around to Optimus' cab. He swung a door open and she gratefully climbed in.

Optimus' holoform was a man of about fortyish by appearance, wearing a checked shirt and a hat, and with tattoos on his arms, and Mikaela thought he had chosen well, for he _looked_ like a trucker. He turned towards her with a puzzled look on his face.

"That man in the car gave me a hand signal I didn't recognise as he went by." said Optimus, confused.

"Show me" said Mikaela, then realised a second before Optimus demonstrated, what it had probably been. She nodded when he demonstrated.

"It's not very polite, it's called "flipping the bird" and no, I don't know why they call it that." she said as Optimus executed a smooth U-turn as the road became empty enough to perform the manoeuvre. "He's obviously a rude man and a bad driver." She gripped the holoform's amazingly solid-feeling arm as Prime drove them back towards the base, only just staying within the speed limit.

In the container at the back, Ratchet and Sam watched Bumblebee worriedly. Ratchet had explained to Sam that he had no idea how long the effects of his EMP would last, and that he couldn't risk doing another one, not while in connection with Prime, and not without risk of damaging Bumblebee beyond repair. Sam crawled on top of Bumblebee's chest, spreading his arms and caressing his friend's smooth chest, not knowing or caring that Ratchet was a witness to the tears flowing unchecked down his face.

The little drone uncurled as its auto-repair mended it enough to get it back online again. It twitched and then began to finish the work in the hip area it had started while the auto-repair finished undoing the damage done. A few more nips later, it had destroyed the sensory and motor functions of Bumblebee's lower body. It scuttled up the spinal structure, settling itself atop the similar cluster at the top, where the various cables that controlled and connected to the upper limbs, head and torso came together. It attacked the bundled cables, severing arm locomotor cables, severing auditory and optical connections, and once again, slowly and painfully damaging the sensory connectors and cables.

Once it had done that, its programming told it, it would be time to attack the systems that surrounded and connected to Bumblebee's Spark chamber, and thus the Spark within.

Mikaela didn't even wait for Optimus to come to a stop, jumping out of his cab and running to unlock the container as he slowed and stopped outside the base. Ratchet set off at a run for the medbay, Sam lying on and clinging to Bumblebee's chest.

Optimus disconnected from the container and transformed back into his bipedal form, scooping up Mikaela gently in one hand, and taking off into the base after Ratchet.

They found Sam sitting on the ground outside the medbay, his head in his hands. Optimus put Mikaela down, and she knelt beside him, putting her arms around him.

"Ratchet doesn't want us in there." he said dully. "He said he has to be as fast as possible, and he can't be if we're there under his feet, risking being trodden on and asking questions. He said it's best for Bumblebee."

Optimus reactivated his holoform-not an easy task in robot mode-and walked it over to them. Crouching, he put the holoform's arms around the two distressed teens, holding them with his holoform as he would have held two distressed young 'bots in robot form.

The two humans and one holoform stayed like that for some time.

Ratchet put Bumblebee down on his operating table and re-onlined him, to explain what he was going to do, but as he saw the young mech jerk, saw an optic gutter and die, and a heard a horrible

whine of overstressed engines, he hurriedly offlined him again. Nothing could justify putting him through _that_, and if he was in that much pain the little Autobot wouldn't understand what Ratchet was trying to tell him anyway. The best thing he could do was try to find whatever was causing the damage and remove or deactivate it before it deactivated Bumblebee.

He found and opened Bumblebee's chest plates, and pushed aside the surface cables running across Bumblebee's solid abdominal area. Activating his saw blades, he opened up Bumblebee's upper chest and abdominal cavity as carefully as he could, but with no time for finesse. Swiftly, he activated his firewalls and anti-virus programmes, in case it had planted a virus in Bumblebee's processors, and ejected the appropriate jack from under his left arm plating, connecting it with practiced ease to Bumblebee's data port in the back of his neck.

He scanned and visually searched the area, and spotted it by both methods at the same time, crouched atop the bundle of cables it as engaged in destroying. Ratchet made a grab for it, flinching as it scuttled back while firing at his fingers with the micro laser mounted at the tip of its scorpion-like tail. It scuttled for the opening in Bumblebee's neck where cables fed into the cranial area. If it got in there, Ratchet would be forced to open Bumblebee's head, and that would risk damaging his processors, as he would have no time to take the care and attention he usually did when he had to deal with the heads of Autobots.

He made another grab for the drone, and this time the tail was its undoing as Ratchet's specialist anti-tremble middle finger and his thumb latched firmly onto the drone, and he pulled it out of Bumblebee as his other hand retrieved a jar with a greased lid. Sliding off the lid, he dropped the furiously slashing and firing mini-Scorponok inside, sliding the lid straight back on. Paying no heed to either it or the burns and cuts it had inflicted on the fingers and palms of that hand, he turned back to his priority task-saving the life of Bumblebee.


	8. Chapter 8: How To Save A Life

-1Drone

Chapter Eight

How to Save a Life.

He scanned Bumblebee again, wanting to be certain that the creature he had caught was the only one in there. Once he was satisfied that that was the case, he gently put his hands into Bumblebee's chest cavity and began to assess the damage.

He began swearing inventively and virulently. His scan was telling him that Bumblebee's self repair, transformation matrix, vocal and communication network, and three quarters of all his locomotive and sensory cabling was totally unusable, completely destroyed. The drone had managed to sever about half of the cables at the top of the spinal structure before Ratchet had caught it.

Bumblebee's systems were running on such a small set of connections that they were in danger of overloading or blowing out. If that happened, there would be nothing further he could do to help Bumblebee. The little mech's life could be over before it had really begun.

"War stinks." said Ratchet as he began taking out and identifying all the dead circuitry and chips and wires-what was identifiable, that was. Most of it was, and he could guess at some of that that wasn't obvious.

He yelled for Cliffjumper and Mirage over the internal comm system, as he pulled out the damaged cabling, tubing and leads, sorted them out and made a mental list of the parts and spares he would need.

Cliffjumper and Mirage entered at a run-Optimus had heard the call, and got his protoform to pull the two young humans out of the way of the medbay doors, giving the running mechs free access.

Ratchet instructed Cliffjumper to fetch a vat of coolant and an emergency cooling unit, and then to bring him several hundred meters of new coolant cable. As Cliffjumper ran off to do just that, Ratchet rattled off a complicated list of parts identified with letters and numbers, a list that would have left a human's head reeling, but Mirage committed the list to memory, dashing off to the stores to get the required parts.

He unjacked from Bumblebee's head, satisfied that there was nothing nasty from the drone lurking in Bumblebee's processors. He connected up another jack that led from Bumblebee's head to a monitoring machine: fluctuating processor readings could be the first warning that something vital had failed. He was concerned about overheating in the remaining linkages, and as he thought that, Cliffjumper returned with the emergency cooling unit, a large vat of coolant, and festooned with a huge coil of piping.

He virtually pounced at him, eager to relieve him of his burden and put it to good use. As he wound the pipes of the emergency cooling unit around Bumblebee's remaining systems, plus around his arms, legs and head to keep the stressed areas there cool, he gave Cliffjumper a list of tools-mainly linking devices and lasers and welding tools-to assemble for him. Cliffjumper shot off to do as Ratchet asked.

Ratchet set the coolant unit going, sighing with relief. Overheating had been the greatest peril Bumblebee had faced, and Ratchet now felt that he had a very good chance of restoring Bumblebee back to the way he had been before the nasty little drone had got in, however that had been. He thought back.

"That Pitspawn Barricade!" he said out loud. "I _thought_ rending wasn't his usual style, he prefers to intimidate and crush, psychologically and physically."

He pulled out more damaged circuitry, checking it, committing anything he hadn't originally asked Mirage for to memory, and then discarding it on the floor.

Mirage returned with a large tray of the required items, he'd just grabbed handfuls and put them in piles on the tray. Ratchet was glad that earlier he'd been bored enough to individually label each and every example of a spare part: now he knew straight away which one of three similar-looking but differently-functioning parts was which, without wasting valuable seconds identifying each one. He gave Mirage the smaller list of things he'd at first missed, and Mirage went off to get them.

Ratchet started connecting wires and circuits together, then inserted them into Bumblebee, linking them up as Mirage brought the other items and Cliffjumper brought him the requested tools.

Ratchet stared off by rebuilding and reconnecting first Bumblebee's locomotor and sensory cables, then getting his auto-repair back up and running - which in itself was a major help - getting his coolant system back to the levels needed to keep his body functional when online, and replacing some of the remaining linkages that had been damaged but not destroyed. Then he got down to installing a new vocal processor and rebuilding his radio, data and other communication sending and receiving technology. Three times Mirage or Cliffjumper went to get parts from stores or new tools that Ratchet found that he needed. Mirage and Cliffjumper also took it in turns to monitor Bumblebee's processor readings, and keep the two humans (who refused to go off and sleep) and the other mechs in the base informed of Bumblebee's progress.

Once he had finished with all of that, he put together the parts needed for Bumblebee's transformation circuitry, and reinstalled it.

More than twenty-four hours later, Ratchet double-checked his work, re-checked Bumblebee's processor readings for himself, and carefully welded his upper chest and abdominal cavity shut again, carefully closing the hinged chest plates, waving Cliffjumper over to deal with the fine work to hopefully reduce or remove the scarring his brutal surgery could otherwise leave Bumblebee with.

Cliffjumper, as a craftsmech, had been constructing bodies only a few years before the war had broken out, and he had been forced to learn combat skills. Now his crafting skills were mainly turned to reducing the scarring cased by conflict. Not that Cliffjumper ever complained about it, but Ratchet was willing to bet that he'd love to get back to crafting sparkling or adult femme bodies again.

Ratchet was just thankful that the drone's damage had been confined to the torso: if it had attacked systems in the limbs, or worse the head, Ratchet wasn't certain if he could have restored Bumblebee to full operational capacity without he and Cliffjumper having to build him a new body, assuming his Spark and processors would had stayed alive and online long enough to be transferred.

Ratchet had one final task to perform that day, and that was to assess and nullify the threat posed by the drone. He picked it up in its jar, taking it to a sealed section of the lab reserved for hazardous work.

Ratchet had seen the damage the tiny but lethal creature had been capable of. He was not going to underestimate the danger it could pose to him and to others.


	9. Chapter 9: Aftermath

-1Drone

Chapter Nine

Aftermath

It was, superficially, very similar to drones that he himself used, Ratchet mused as he watched it skitter about its jar.

The ones Ratchet used were created and programmed to get into and narrow areas or tight spots where Ratchet's fingers wouldn't reach, or could do more damage gaining entry, and carry out delicate repairs and reattachments, or even check for the presence or absence of damage. Medical drones were used to repair damage in awkward or sensitive places. The abomination he was now observing was a mockery of the benign medical drones, for its purpose was to destroy instead of to repair.

At least, he was assuming it was a drone, but Autobot ethics demanded that he be certain before proceeding any further. He stood before the jar and carried out a deep, probing scan, searching for a complicated processor core, a Spark chamber, or anything else that might indicate that this could be considered, by either Autobot or human standards, to be alive.

He was relieved when he found nothing of the sort, for if it had been living, he would have then had to assess it's sapience, its awareness of self, and that could have been complicated.

Satisfied that it was not alive, and surmising that there was little more he could learn by watching it scuttle and skitter around in its glass prison, he picked up the container and its occupant, and carefully placed it in a containment field. Then he connected up a few attachments from a machine integrated atop the field generator, and sent through an electromagnetic pulse that would be strong enough to permanently deactivate the drone.

He removed the now-inert drone to a table, for he could now inspect it without danger to either his systems, or other people's.

He noted the sharp, thin alloy cutting blades its pincers were fitted with, and the laser cutter on the tip of its tail. He looked at the hand that had been damaged-his auto repair had fixed it all, but he remembered the pain he had felt. Both claws and tail had been, he suspected, capable of slicing an entry hole. As he had found none, he had his suspicions confirmed that Barricade's change of attack mode had been for the purpose of ensuring that this nasty piece of mechanical mayhem was able to gain access to Bumblebee's most sensitive systems. Ratchet growled, wishing that his medical ethics didn't get in the way of him making some of his fantasies about making Barricade suffer for this into a reality.

Once again, Ratchet activated his anti-virus systems and firewalls, for Decepticon programmers had been known to leave nasty 'surprises' hidden in drone programming to infect any unwary Autobots: Ratchet had lost more than one colleague to dirty Decepticon tricks such as that.

Jacking into the drone, Ratchet accessed and began to study and unravel its programming. His caution had been well-advised, so he did manage to avoid the hidden trap that tried to download part of the drone's programming into his own processors and overwrite his own coding. After that, there were no more hidden viruses or Trojans, but Ratchet didn't relax his guard one bit, even running a systems scan on himself, set to run for 24 hours after disconnecting from the drone, just to make certain nothing had sneaked in.

Then he dismantled the drone's physical form.

Three hours later, he knew who had created the drone: only one Decepticon they knew had reached Earth, and had the knowledge to construct a drone both so complex physically, and with such complicated and thoroughly _nasty_ programming, including an instruction to destroy the communications system of the one Autobot who would find that to be almost the worst part of the whole experience.

"Starscream, the Pit's too good a place for you when you cease to function." he muttered darkly.

Ratchet went back into the emergency medbay area, he found that Cliffjumper had finished his work, and a cursory glance told Ratchet that Cliffjumper's work was, as usual, impeccable; there was no sign that Bumblebee had been operated on.

Mirage had also gone out and brought Bumblebee's human friends in to see him: they were half-sat, half-slouched in Mirage's hands, well out of the way of anybody's feet. Ratchet approved, for he was sure that they would be the first thing Bumblebee would ask about upon waking if they were not there.

Ratchet brought Bumblebee back online, turning the younger mech's head so that when his optics unshuttered the first thing he would see would be his human companions, who, themselves, Ratchet noticed, were low on energy and had dark circles around their eyes. Accessing the Internet briefly, Ratchet found that this was often, in humans, a sign of great fatigue.

Bumblebee's optics flared briefly, then settled back to their normal intensity as he looked up. One hand moved to settle on the location of his vocal processor as his optics focused on his human companions.

"Sam, Mikaela." then his optics looked elsewhere. "Ratchet, Mirage, Cliffjumper!" he said as he spotted each of them. "My _voice _- Thank you!" He sat up, looked at his hands and shifted his feet.

"I can move, and speak, and probably transform, and it doesn't _hurt_ any more! Thank you!" The level of emotion in Bumblebee's voice was enough to move Mikaela to tears first, but Sam was not long in following up by wiping his eyes.

Bumblebee reached out his hands towards Mikaela and Sam: they scrambled from Mirage's hands into Bumblebee's without hesitation. Bumblebee brought them up close to his face, where they put out hands and stroked their Autobot friend's smooth metal cheek, relieved that he was well again. Then they stood and each kissed his face, Sam almost overbalancing as he did so.

"Put them down on the table next to you, Bumblebee, before they fall out of your hands." Ratchet told him.

"I wouldn't drop them Ratch, don't you trust me?" said Bumblebee, sounding hurt. However, he did as Ratchet asked.

"I don't trust either you nor them when you are all low on energy." Ratchet explained, glowering at the humans and Bumblebee. "Bumblebee, _you_ are going for an eight-hour recharge. Now." Ratchet told him, pointing a commanding finger in the direction of the recharge chambers. Bumblebee slid himself off the table, his legs almost giving way: Mirage helped hold him till he got steady again. Bumblebee gave Mirage a grateful nod before turning back to look up at Ratchet.

"No arguments there, Ratch, I never knew something like that could leave me so exhausted." he said.

"Systems trying to run without the right wiring or circuitry or connections still use energy, in fact they use more than working systems because they keep trying to perform the task even though they cannot." Ratchet explained. As Bumblebee walked through to the recharge room without any further protest, Ratchet turned his optics on Sam and Mikaela.

"As for you two, now that you know Bumblebee is safe and well, it is time you did your human equivalent of recharging. I believe it is a period of voluntary unconsciousness that you call 'sleep.'"

He picked them up gently, one in each hand, and took them to a curtained-off area of the medical bay they he had had made up just in case any humans ever needed his services. So far he had been lucky: the two small-mech rest berths made up with mattresses, pillows and covers for human use had not been needed yet.

"These are available for your use." Ratchet told them. "If you need to dispose of waste, the human waste disposal unit is in that cubicle." he said, pointing to a portaloo that had been donated. "I do not wish to see you two vertical again for between eight and ten hours otherwise, you are severely energy depleted." He glared at them. "Understood?"

"You're the doctor, Doctor." said Sam, flipping off a pretty sloppy impression of a salute. Mikaela didn't even waste the energy doing that: she merely gave a weary nod.

Ratchet walked out as the pair stripped down to their underwear and slipped under the covers together: a small-mech rest berth was bigger than a king-sized bed, one was more than big enough to hold them both. They snuggled up together, and both gave weary sighs.

Five minutes later, the pair were both fast asleep.

In the meantime, Ratchet was pondering just how he could get his own back on Starscream without compromising his medical ethics. He had several effective ideas, but none were what you would cal ethical. Then he had an idea, his face cracking an evil smile.

He'd 'just happen' to tell Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, the Lamborghini Twins, all about Starscream's little drone and how he'd used it on Bumblebee.

Then he'd let _them_ deal with Starscream in their own, unique manner...


End file.
